LOS ANGELES – Tom Izzo isn’t big on birthdays. It’s not that he doesn’t like to have fun or isn’t grateful for the good things in his life. It’s just that his happens to fall on January 30, right in the heat of the college basketball season. “He’s so ultra focused that he doesn’t have much time to celebrate a birthday,” his wife Lupe laments. “I wish he would a little bit more, but you know Tom. He’s just constant. He’s ultra focused on making his team better and getting the guys ready to be successful in life.”
Even when Izzo turned 70 last week, he didn’t break much from his routine. His daughter Raquel visited the house in the morning with her 18-month-old daughter Isabelle. Lupe brought a cake to the office at lunchtime. Izzo ran practice, met with the local media and then boarded Michigan State’s plane for its trip to Los Angeles. The gymnastics team, which also had competitions in L.A., was on board as well. Everyone wore party hats and sang “Happy Birthday” to Izzo when he got on board. Then, says Lupe, “He opened up his computer and started watching film.”
Izzo had been feeling worn down from his team’s hectic travel schedule. He was also battling a cold. By the time the Spartans’ bus was rolling towards their hotel, Izzo was sound asleep in his seat. He felt so lousy he skipped the late night video session and headed straight to bed.
That might sound like the type of fatigue that hits your average septuagenarian, but the following morning, Izzo was frantically prowling the court inside USC’s Galen Center, spewing his usual piss and vinegar as he barked his way through a 90-minute practice. Aside from his raspy voice, there was no sign that he was ever ill — or even tired, for that matter. And you certainly wouldn’t have guessed that this was a 70-year-old coach playing out the string.
Shortly after the practice was over, Izzo appeared refreshed as he sat on a couch in the hotel lobby down the street from the arena. “I feel great,” he said, with good reason. At that moment, his Spartans were 9-0 in the Big Ten and ranked No. 9 in the AP Top 25. “We got a good team. I don’t think it’s a great team yet,” he said. “Our schedule is a little backloaded. I still think four or five losses might win our league. We’ll have to see what happens when we have some adversity.”
That arrived the next day when the Spartans lost, 70-64, to USC. Three nights later they lost again, this time by 63-61 at UCLA. Michigan State will try to avoid a three-game losing streak when it hosts Oregon on Saturday (2 p.m., FOX). No matter what happens in that game, the Spartans are bound to drop a few spots when the next AP poll comes out on Monday.
Izzo may be in the twilight of his career, but there is scant evidence that he is about to call it a night. This goes against conventional wisdom, especially given the recent spate of high-profile coaches who stepped aside the last four years. Roy Williams in 2021. Mike Krzyzewski in 2022. Jim Boeheim in 2023. Jim Larranaga in December. Florida State’s Leonard Hamilton (76) announced this week that he will step down at the end of the season. The more shocking farewells were issued by Villanova’s Jay Wright and Virginia’s Tony Bennett, who stepped away at the ages of 60 and 55, respectively. Izzo predicts that more coaches will follow suit, largely because the job has become so all-encompassing. But he doesn’t sound like he’s going to be one of them anytime soon.
“I’m too stubborn to go out the door for the wrong reasons,” Izzo told Hoops HQ. “I think I still have the fire. I still think I have the ability to reach my players. The advantage of being in a college atmosphere is that you’re around so many vibrant young kids all the time. I feel better than I felt probably in a lot of years. I mean, I don’t feel 70. I always thought age was how you act and how healthy you are. Well, I’m healthy and I still act like an idiot.”
Asked what she would say to people who believe her husband is on the verge of calling it quits, Lupe replied, “Don’t hold your breath. Tom still has a lot of passion for what he’s doing and he’s not ready to leave. He’ll threaten every day that he is, but I don’t see it.”
It is striking to see Izzo bear such an upbeat countenance given the barrage of challenges he faced over the last nine years. It started when the Larry Nassar scandal broke in 2016 and ripped through the entire university. Then there was the COVID-19 pandemic that forced the cancellation of the 2020 NCAA Tournament and severely disrupted the following season. The 2023 campus shooting that claimed the lives of three Michigan State students and injured five others took a heavy toll as well. All that time, Izzo, like every other college coach, had to navigate the chaos brought about by the new paradigm around Name, Image and Likeness, as well as rampant transferring.
Izzo has been vocal about his objections to those changes, but he has also stopped trying to fight the system so hard and started figuring ways to operate better within it. For the last few years, Izzo was part of a loosely organized group of elite coaches such as Krzyzewski, Wright and Gonzaga’s Mark Few who met weekly by Zoom with Dan Gavitt, the NCAA’s Vice President for Men’s Basketball. Those meetings and the initiatives they produced took up a lot of time but had no impact on the decision-making. “I decided last year that I didn’t want to be on any more committees because they were useless,” Izzo said. “Coaches have zero say. None.”
The work Izzo is doing with his current team is evidence that he is still very good at his job. Though he has gotten older, his players have stayed the same age. Yet, he continues to connect with them while still holding them accountable in all the ways that matter. “I’ve said this since the day I got in. I’m not the best rebounding coach, I’m not the best defensive coach or this coach or that coach. I’m the best time-spending coach,” he said. That was the main reason Izzo has not gotten nearly as involved with USA Basketball over the years as many of his peers have. “You still only have so many hours in a day,” he said. “I’d rather be with my guys in the summer out at my beach house.”
For all his carping about transfers, Izzo has taken his share the last few years. He prefers to bring in players from mid-major programs who feel like they have something to prove. The two he signed out of the portal last spring came from Omaha and Longwood. He also signed three freshmen, the best of whom is 6-foot-3 guard Jace Richardson, whose father, Jason, played for Izzo at Michigan State from 1999-2001. The influx of talent was critical after the Spartans lost their top three scorers. In an effort to forge bonds, Izzo took his team on a summertime exhibition trip to Spain and an exhibition game at Northern Michigan, his alma mater. He has also taken them to Tigers and Lions games and had them over to his house numerous times. “In this day and age where everything is a transaction, I still want to have a relationship-based program,” he said.
The Spartans began the season unranked and were picked to finish fifth in the Big Ten. After losing to Kansas, 77-69, at the Champions Classic, and then to Memphis in the Maui Invitational, the Spartans reeled off 13 straight wins. The 9-0 start in Big Ten play came largely against bottom-tier teams, which covered up some of their deficiencies, primarily their three-point shooting. The Spartans are converting just 28.7 percent from behind the arc, which ranks 350th in the country. They are only taking 32.6 percent of their shots from three, which ranks 327th per KenPom. It’s unlikely Michigan State will be a great three-point shooting team this season, but Izzo notes that several of his players are shooting career-low percentages, so he is hoping that those numbers will experience a positive regression.
This team is unusually balanced and deep. Ten players are averaging 15 minutes or more. The Spartans are getting 42.2 percent of their minutes from the bench, which ranks 13th nationally, according to KenPom. “It’s a little harder to do the substituting, but it’s a little more fun to practice, a little more fun to be in hotels,” Izzo said. “They’re smart, too. We got a grade-point average of 3.51 last semester. I told a couple of kids to flunk because I didn’t want the players to be smarter than the coach. But I have those kind of kids, which is a treat.”
For all of his crotchety complaining about The Way Things Used To Be, Izzo would not be effective if he didn’t adjust his methods. He can still enforce his old-school standards, but he understands the importance of compromise and a softer touch. “I have former players come in and say, what are you doing? Why are you letting that kid wear his hair like that? I tell them, oh my God, I’ve got a lot more fish to fry than worry about his hair,” he said. “I don’t coach players as hard as I used to, but I can still push them. Last year I said, I’m going one of two ways. I’m either getting out or I’m going to get back to normal, which is pushing players, pushing staff harder, but doing what I believe in and adapting how I do it.”
“Last year I said, I’m going one of two ways. I’m either getting out or I’m going to get back to normal, which is pushing players, pushing staff harder, but doing what I believe in and adapting how I do it.”
Tom Izzo
A larger concern is the fact that Michigan State does not have an obvious successor. Izzo’s top assistant, Doug Wojcik, is an extremely valuable member of the program, but it is unlikely he would take over, not least because he never played at Michigan State. The problem, alas, is there is no other member of the Spartan “family” who is well-established coach in the college game, or even the NBA for that matter. And given the difficulty that schools like Michigan, Indiana and Villanova have had in going with “family hires,” it would be a risk for Michigan State to limit its pool of candidates so narrowly.
The transition might go more smoothly if Izzo were willing to name a coach-in-waiting at the start of his final season the way Krzyzewski did with his then-assistant Jon Scheyer, but that would mean a protracted farewell tour. That is not Izzo’s style, but he doesn’t rule it out. “I think about that. I really do,” he said. “I wouldn’t recruit a kid if I thought I was leaving in a year. They say you should have an exit strategy, but I can’t say that I have one.”
Then there’s the question of what exactly would the famously fidgety Izzo would retire to? This is a man who has always enjoyed a hard day’s work. He is energized by stress. He might wish he had a few more days off here and there, but it’s hard to imagine him puttering around the house or playing golf six days a week. “Tom’s very aware that after he retires he has to have a Plan A, plus a Plan B in case the Plan A isn’t working out,” Lupe said. “He has to have something. He’s not a sit-beside-the-pool-and-read-a-book kind of guy.”
The one thing everyone agrees on is that no one will have to push Izzo out the door or tell him he has lost his fast ball. He’ll be the first one to recognize when the time is right. “I’m gonna make sure I don’t do what I’ve seen a lot of people do, which is go a year or two too long,” he said. “I don’t need the money. I don’t live a lavish lifestyle at all. So that’s not even a factor. I am not going to cheat the program. I am not going to cheat the players. The day I don’t want to take a redeye or I don’t want to take the guys to my beach house, I’m out, okay? I really believe that. But it ain’t right now.”
